Tag: Contact Center

First Contact Resolution – The Second Best Key Performance Indicator of Customer Care

by Guest Author, posted in Communicate
K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • Because of its potential to cut costs quickly and boost customer satisfaction, first contact resolution (FCR) is gaining recognition as the major key performance indicator (KPI) of success in customer care settings.
  • More enlightened customer care executives realize that their happiest customers are those that never have to contact a customer care center at all.

Because of its potential for immediate, effective and powerful results, FCR is gaining recognition and acceptance as a major KPI across customer service operations. The ability of a high FCR level to affect revenues positively and boost customer satisfaction, while decreasing the cost of customer care by reducing redundant operations, makes its achievement a win-win situation for both the corporation and its customers alike. Continue reading “First Contact Resolution – The Second Best Key Performance Indicator of Customer Care” →

Step One in Mobilizing Your Contact Center: Send Your Agents Home

by , posted in Mobilize
K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • Initiating a remote agent program is an effective way to get started in mobilizing your contact center.
  • The economic and human resource benefits of a remote agent program to the enterprise and the agents are too important and substantial to ignore in contact center planning efforts.

The mobility revolution is affecting every aspect of the business world today as workers are expected to be available from anywhere at any time, and customers demand 24×7 corporate access from the device of their choice. In the long term the shift to mobility will affect all stakeholders in the customer care environment including the agents, the contact center managers and the customers. In this initial blog on the topic I will focus on the agents.

Continue reading “Step One in Mobilizing Your Contact Center: Send Your Agents Home” →

Evolving Your Fixed-line Data Network to a New-breed, Flexible and Cost-effective Beast

by , posted in Network
J. Stradling
J. Stradling

Summary Bullets:

  • Putting applications and data in the cloud and running corporate video is likely to require a switch to next-generation IP and Ethernet
  • Service providers have become good at monitoring and managing how applications behave in the network to offer optimized solutions

Traditional legacy data networks (e.g., Frame Relay, TDM/leased line and ATM) might not be ideal workhorses for the next-generation corporate network, where more applications and data reside in the cloud, and where video communications need new jitter and latency parameters in order to work.

Continue reading “Evolving Your Fixed-line Data Network to a New-breed, Flexible and Cost-effective Beast” →

Have You Considered the Need for a Session Border Controller in Your Contact Center?

by , posted in Communicate
K. Landoline
K. Landoline

Summary Bullets:

  • VoIP and SIP trunking adoption are driving the need for SBCs in the modern contact center
  • Assessing the value of an SBC and selecting the appropriate SBC for your center is crucial

The transition from time division multiplexing (TDM) to end-to-end IP networks, coupled with the growing requirement for enhanced security and regulatory compliance in the customer service environment are major causes of the added intricacy involved in running a contact center today. As the use of SIP trunking becomes more common and the number of carriers offering these services grows, the session border controller (SBC), long an important element of service provider networks, brings to the enterprise the potential to address the many new and developing issues of the contact center. SBCs can simplify networks, add more intelligence to operations and introduce economic and operational balance to the new networking equation. As customer care continues to become an important competitive differentiator, enterprises must take action to ensure their contact centers are reliable and secure, that networks interoperate with wide-area IP/SIP networks and users experience efficient and economical operations.

Continue reading “Have You Considered the Need for a Session Border Controller in Your Contact Center?” →

Virtualization and UC: Strange Bedfellows No More

by , posted in Communicate

Brian Riggs
B. Riggs
Summary Bullets:

  • Server virtualization is available here and now for a wide range of UC solutions
  • Desktop virtualization for UC client software is by and large in the works

Virtualization and real-time communications have traditionally made for strange bedfellows. Yet persistent R&D work among top UC solution and virtualization software developers led to deployment on virtualized servers in a data center as a standard option for PBX call control software. Mitel started the ball rolling, working closely with VMware to develop a version of the vSphere virtualization platform capable of supporting real-time communications software. Server virtualization is now a checklist item for both UC and contact center software, with Aastra, Avaya, Cisco, Microsoft, Siemens Enterprise and to a certain extent, ShoreTel, all supporting it.

Continue reading “Virtualization and UC: Strange Bedfellows No More” →